Out of Time
by Paradoxicality
Summary: Thrown out of his world and into another, Matt Blake finds himself fighting against the ravages of time. But is there any way back once you've lost everything?
1. Chapter 1

Somewhere on Earth, a phone began buzzing.

Matt fumbled as he tried to both pull his phone from his pocket while also removing his headphones and avoiding the traffic speeding down the road.

"I'm literally two seconds away," he said, balancing some combination of items in his hands and arms.

"You're late," an exasperated voice replied, a buzz of activity behind it.

"I can literally smell your skinny latte with almond milk and one sugar from here," Matt replied, picking up his pace in response.

"Just get a move on, will you. There's some sleazy guy eying me up and I'm this close to leaving."

"I'll pretend to be your boyfriend to ward him off, got it,"

"Also, I've cut out the extra sugar in my drinks; I'm a grown up now."

"I'll be sure to get you a card to mark this momentous occasion," replied Matt, hanging up and stuffing his phone back in his pocket.

Matt was one of those people whose very nature prevented him from not being at least a little late. It was a personal vice, but of all the things he chastised himself for it was rarely that high up the list.

Even so, he felt a rare pang of guilt at having left Pippa waiting for him. They hadn't seen each other for a few months, the excesses of a newly adult, post-uni world getting in the way. Although Pippa no doubt knew to just automatically be patient by default.

Matt paced around a corner, moving in to a small side street at the edge of Edinburgh city centre. It was both quieter and significantly more expensive down here, but Matt didn't quite have the courage to say that that £5 coffee they always had from their favourite shop left a much bigger dent in his weekly budget than it once did.

Cleo's Coffee House seemed fairly quiet as Matt barged through the door far more forcefully and far less gracefully than he'd intended to. He spotted Pippa sat on one of the sofas in the corner, phone in hand, coffee mostly drunk, and walked over to her.

"You look a mess," she commented, barely looking over her phone.

Matt tried to reshuffle his wild mass of dark hair. It was a bit like trying to arrange flowers in a vase where, if you shuffled it randomly enough times, it eventually coalesced into something normal-looking.

"I got stuck at home getting out of the door. I'm only…" he checked his watch, "thirty-five minutes late. That's like a record."

He collapsed into the chair opposite Pippa, noting that she had clearly made it so that he ended up in the uncomfortable seat.

Pippa put away her phone and smiled. "It's good to see you mate. Typical Matt-hair aside you're looking well."

Matt gave an extra involuntary muss of his hair. "Thanks. You too. I mean, look at that big-boy suit."

"Ugh, don't," Pippa sighed, pressing the creases out of her trousers. "I look like my mother."

"Your mother's not unattractive either," Matt shrugged, and was instantly met with daggers. "How is life working at Thompson and Sanderson? Lots of juicy family secrets and messy divorces?"

"I get coffee for a guy that I had to once double check was just asleep and not dead. So, peachy, thanks."

Matt knew Pippa well enough to know that within a year she would have worked her way far enough up in the company to have her own coffee-fetcher, so opted against sympathising.

"What about you, how are things looking on the job front?" Pippa asked, as Matt started drinking his now lukewarm coffee.

"Oh, you know, few interviews here and there, nothing serious," he shrugged.

"I'm sure something will crop up soon," Pippa smiled. The two of them unfortunately had the type of relationship where words of sincerity stuck out like sore thumbs, and so Matt couldn't help but feel a little patronised.

He was about to protest that it had only been eight months since he had officially finished university but then that number stuck in his throat. _Eight_ months. What had he been doing for the best part of a year? By all rights shouldn't he have a job by now? And not just the babysitting job he occasionally did for the Jacksons down the road which only really infantilised him further.

"How's Cal doing?" Matt asked, changing the subject and forcing down more of his now barely warm drink.

"He was having all that trouble with Dan and Johnny, so he moved in to mine since he basically lived there anyway. I think he's alright but missing his mum, you know?"

Matt nodded, and then from out of nowhere a searing pain overcame him. His head pounded, throbbing on all sides, and his vision went entirely white, as if someone were shining a light directly in his face. He writhed as something squeezed and stretched his brain, until, after what felt like hours, the muffled voices around him began to get clearer once again.

"You OK?" someone asked, a hand resting on his shoulder.

Matt blinked, his vision returning, to see Pippa and an older lady he didn't recognise standing over him.

He managed a nod, his face still aching as if he'd collided with a brick wall. The older lady gave a smile and moved back to her seat.

"Did you put something in my coffee?" he joked, as Pippa knelt down next to him.

She laughed, somewhat awkwardly for some reason, and placed the back of her hand against his head and then felt for a pulse on his wrist. "I hope you don't mind. My dad's a nurse so I've picked up some things. Do you ever get migraines?"

Matt scrunched up his face even more. "Have you ever known me to?"

Pippa looked somewhat confused but stood back up. "Maybe go see a doctor? It might not be anything serious, but it's good to get it checked out. You seemed to be in real pain for a while there."

"Go see a doctor now? I don't want to run out on you for nothing, I'm fine."

"Oh. Well, actually, I'm here to meet my boyfriend; he'll be coming in a little while. We could always give you a lift, though, if you wanted to go to A+E or something?"

"Cal's coming? I thought he was working today?"

Pippa froze and suddenly looked mildly spooked. "You know Callum?"

"Pip, what are you on about, course I do. You've been dating long enough."

"Do you…know him through work or something?"

Matt stared at her. "What do you mean? I know him through you, you weirdo."

Pippa let out a nervous laugh and shook her head. She pulled out her phone even though Matt knew it hadn't rung.

"Look, that must be him now, he's probably just around the corner. I hope you feel better soon. It was nice to meet you."

She gave one last smile and hurried off further into the café in the general direction of the toilets.

Matt remained sitting for a while, utterly confused and the tiniest bit scared. He reasoned that he must just be dazed, his brain not making the right connections, and so decided to head home and sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

The pain in his head had mostly eased but he still felt out of sorts, as if the whole world was lagging by a few seconds. He emerged from Cleo's Coffee House and was met with a drizzly rain that clung in cold droplets to his skin. He pulled his phone from his pocket but, for whatever reason, found that it wouldn't turn on. Sighing heavily and rueing battery manufacturers everywhere, Matt shoved his phone away and walked back down the street. Hurrying back through the city, he headed to the nearest bus stop, just in time to hop on to one as it began pulling away.

The bus was mostly crowded, but, given the alternatives, a seat next to a young blonde woman who was muttering to herself seemed like the safest option.

It took a minute for Matt to realise that the woman was staring at him. Not in the usual 'let's see who I'm sat next to' way, but in the 'you've been looking at me for way too long and are now starting to unnerve me' way.

"Hello!" she said at last, quickly followed by a broad grin as if they were good friends.

"Alright?" Matt replied, noticing a strange device the woman was holding in her lap. It was about the size of a large phone, with wires and buttons emerging from its metallic surface in all directions. Everything on it kept flashing randomly, and a small dish not unlike a radar was spinning on its axis at the top.

The woman nodded slowly, still grinning, before leaning closer to Matt and sniffing him.

"Hey!" he protested.

"You wouldn't happen to have been to a Venusian wedding recently, would you? You just, uh, smell a bit off."

Matt reflexively sniffed himself and, apart from dampness thanks to the rain, couldn't smell anything. "I have no clue what you're saying."

"Never mind. Must be something else. Go eat a biscuit though; your blood sugar's crazy low."

It was Matt's turn to stare, bewildered, at the woman as she began squinting at the whirring object in her lap, holding it up to her ear and constantly checking the scenery past the rain-spattered window.

The two sat in silence for the rest of the journey before Matt hastily got off the bus one stop early, the woman failing to even look up as he left.

Tired and confused, Matt jogged down to his road, and up the garden path outside his house. He found the door locked, and so retrieved the key from its usual position underneath the planter next to the mat.

"It's me," he called as he came in, even though he knew no one else was around. His sister, Sophie, would be at one of her after school clubs. His mum would still be at work. And his dad would be taking their dog, Daisy, for a walk, which essentially amounted to sitting on a park bench and letting the over excitable pup wear herself out.

Matt began mounting the stairs, avoiding the creaky one as he always automatically did, and entered his bedroom.

Except, something was off. His bed had moved. And the sheets were different. And…the walls were a different colour. No longer the dark grey he had so rebelliously chosen in his teenage years, they were now an inoffensive cream colour.

Matt paced around, his head already far too muddled to be dealing with yet more confusion. He briefly exited back on to the landing to make sure he hadn't somehow stumbled into someone else's room, peeking in each of the doors to double check everything else was as he expected it, but no, this was most definitely his. Or at least it should be.

So what had happened? Thoughts bounced around Matt's head. Checking the wardrobe, he found that all his clothes had gone too. Had he been forcibly moved out without his knowledge? And if his parents had done so, for whatever reason, how had they managed it all within the space of a few hours?

He began to wonder if this was some sort of ploy by his mum and dad. They were the most docile people ever but, even though Matt would never actually admit it, very easy to take advantage of. And as much as they had assured him they were happy to have him back home after he'd graduated they surely still wanted him to get on with his life. So maybe they were playing hardball. Quite literally removing him from the house in the hopes that he'd take the hint.

It was a possibility, but it didn't particularly sit right. It was far too malicious for Martin and Hiroko, people who struggle to even raise their eyebrows let alone their voices at anyone.

A strange queasiness passed over Matt, and he eased himself back down the stairs and picked up the home phone. Mum would know what was going on. She'd make sense of it all.

He called her mobile number, reasoning she'd be on the drive home by now, and waited in the dark hallway, chewing on his thumbnail.

"Hello?"

Matt instantly eased upon hearing his mum's voice. "Hey, Mum, it's me. I just got home and-"

"I'm sorry, who is this?"

Matt went cold. "It's Matt. Can you hear me alright?"

"Oh. I think you've dialled a wrong number. I'm Hiroko Blake. I'll hang up now and you can try again, OK?"

Before Matt could answer the line went dead. Past the point of confusion and now beginning to feel the slightest bit angry, Matt double checked his mum's number and redialled.

"Hello, Hiroko Blake speaking."

"Mum, it's me, Matt, why did you hang up?"

Silence.

Matt quickly checked to see if the call was still active before holding the phone back to his ear. "Hello?" he asked tentatively.

"I'm sorry, uh, Matt, but I really do think you're calling the wrong number. You're probably just a digit out! I hope you find your mum soon."

The line went dead.

Matt stood for a while, listening to the beeping, before gently placing the phone back in its base.

He stared at the phone for what felt like the best part of an hour but was probably no more than two minutes, before suddenly finding that he was struggling to breathe. He rushed out of the front door, collapsing on to steps, his body shivering in the rain.


	3. Chapter 3

The rain began to ease but Matt hadn't really noticed. Matt loved logic and reason – it was why he'd always enjoyed science and ultimately chosen to do Biochemistry at university. Cause and effect. Predictable outcomes.

As such, his brain couldn't even begin to think this whole afternoon through. There was no logic to it. When the most sensible explanation is that you're probably lucid dreaming things aren't going well.

Matt had spent the last few minutes steeling himself for his next move. He'd decided to track down his dad, who never bothered to take a phone with him, but was at least predictable enough with his dog walking routines to hopefully be found. His mum might be acting oddly, but surely his dad could provide some sort of explanation.

As he pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, a blonde woman rushed down the path beyond the front gate. Not just any blonde woman, the same one he'd met earlier on the bus. Had she followed him here?

Matt walked down his garden path and was just about to look for where she'd gone when her blonde-bobbed head sprung up in front of him.

"Hello!" she said, not looking at Matt but instead focusing on the house behind him.

"You're the woman from the bus," Matt replied, more as a question than a statement of fact.

"Am I? What bus?"

"_The_ bus. The one we were just on half an hour ago."

"Oh, _that _bus. You were on it too?"

Matt stared at the woman, suddenly noticing that she had begun inching down his pathway. "I was sitting right next to you. You said I smelled funny."

"Na, doesn't sound like me, I wouldn't be that rude. Is this your house?"

"Yeah," Matt replied, an odd tinge of sadness in his voice.

"It's very pretty, love your door mat, can I come in?"

Before he could answer, the woman had opened his door and stood in the hallway, holding the strange device she had been looking at on the bus earlier.

"Hey," he protested, rushing ahead of her. "You can't just barge in. Who are you exactly?"

"The Doctor," she replied absently, scrunching her face as she looked up the stairwell.

"Whose Doctor?"

"Eh, close enough," she shrugged, before mounting the stairs, looking at her boots, returning to the front door, wiping her feet, closing the door, and then racing back up the stairs.

"What's your name?" she called, causing Matt to break out of his bemusement and follow after her.

"Matt. If it's money you want we don't have any here. Can you please leave, otherwise I'll phone the police."

The woman peeked in to the room that had once been Matt's. "I wouldn't do that, I tend to cover most of their calls anyway. Whose is this?"

"Mine. Sort of. Look, can you just please tell me what you want? I've had a really weird day and I'd just prefer it to stop sometime soon."

"This thing tracks fourth-dimensional space anomalies," the woman said, holding the device she'd been studying up to Matt. "Time boo-boos, to you and me. Or, to you, at least."

Matt stared at her as she entered his room. "You're tracking errors in time. With something that looks like an oversized TV remote."

"I even surprise myself sometimes."

The woman began pointing the device around the room, including under the bed and behind the wardrobe.

"I thought you said this was your room?" she asked, head in a cupboard. "Where's all your stuff?"

"Well, it was my room. I don't really know what's going on."

She paused, squinting at Matt. "How do you mean?"

Matt looked intently at the strange woman who had invaded his house and was now spouting nonsense about problems with time, before deciding that she was as good as anyone for getting it all out there.

He exhaled heavily. "I met a friend at a coffee shop earlier, and then got this enormous headache. And then she started acting all weird around me. So, I came home, and my bedroom suddenly looked like this and all my stuff was gone. And when I tried to call my mum she acted like she didn't recognise me."

The woman stared at Matt before approaching him slowly, pulling out a strange, curved, metal wand-shaped thing from her pocket.

"May I?" she asked, a strange sincerity to her tone.

Matt nodded even though he had no clue what was about to happen, just glad that at least someone was listening to him.

She waved the wand-thing up and down, side to side, across his body before holding it to her face and looking at it.

"Oh," she said simply, her face becoming solemn.

"What? Is something wrong?"

The Doctor gently placed her sonic screwdriver back in her pocket. This was going to be hard.

"Everyone exists on a timeline. Even without them knowing it, their life is laid out like a pathway in front of them. From the moment you're born you are heading…to your death, essentially. And some things change, and timelines get tossed and turned a bit, but everyone follows that one path."

She sighed, looking at Matt intently in the eyes. "You…don't, anymore. Technically, you no longer exist. And you never have."

Matt heard the words and rolled them around in his head for a while, but no matter how often he replayed them they still didn't seem to hang together.

"I…don't exist?" he repeated slowly.

"Somehow, you've been removed from your timeline. To put it another way, you've moved from a universe in which you do exist to one where you don't."

"No, but…I'm here. I'm me."

"Yes. Which is amazing, and beautiful, and against all the laws of the universe. But you really shouldn't be."

Matt let out an involuntary laugh, if only to stop himself crying. "So, what, I'm a ghost?"

"People can still see you. In order to be a ghost, you would've had to already been-" the Doctor stopped herself, trailing off.

Matt felt his heart pound in his chest and rushed out of the room. The Doctor followed him, into a large bedroom at the other side of the house. Matt grabbed several picture frames from the top of a cabinet, frantically looking at them all, turning them over, squinting at the corners.

Letting the others fall to the ground, he finally held one picture still in his hands. A photo of himself, his parents and Sophie, taken in Osaka two years ago when they were visiting his grandparents. He adored that photo. They all looked so happy and comfortable together. The tears began to fall down his face; he wasn't in it anymore.


	4. Chapter 4

"What happens now?" Matt asked, carefully putting the photo frame back on the cabinet and rubbing a tear away with his sleeve.

"Well, I guess that's your choice, really," replied the Doctor quietly, picking up the other photos Matt had dropped.

"It's not though, is it? That choice was taken from me. The 'me' that no longer even exists."

The Doctor looked thoughtfully around the room, deciding on what to say next. "Then let's find who or what did this to you. At the very least you deserve some closure."

With that she jumped out of the room and marched back down the hall, entering back in to Matt's bedroom.

Matt stood for a while, looking between the photos on display, but eventually relenting and following after her.

He found the Doctor once again scanning what had been has room, a look of confusion on her face.

"It doesn't quite add up," she said, either to herself or to Matt, he wasn't sure.

"Slight understatement."

"No, I mean, specifically about you. If we were on the bus together, why didn't you ping on my time gizmo? Why did it lead me specifically here?"

"You sniffed me, at least. Did I smell…timey?"

"You smelled of nothing, that was the problem. No sweat, no deodorant, not even the after-scent of a fast food place you'd recently walked past. Nothing. It obviously makes more sense now. Hence why I assumed you'd been to a Venusian wedding – guests give the happy couple boxes of literal nothingness to represent their inferiority to the pair's relationship. They have literally nothing to give as good as what the couple give each other."

"That's…sweet. Or just weird."

"Point being, there must've been something in this room that registered a time anomaly and caused you to be removed from the timeline. But I've looked everywhere."

The Doctor tapped the device against her chin in thought, before rushing to the left-hand wall.

"Unless it's not in here, specifically."

"How do you mean?"

"What does this wall back on to?"

Matt shrugged. "Next door, I guess; it's a semi-detached house."

The Doctor sprinted out of the room and jumped down the stairs. She was halfway out of the door by the time Matt had started after her, and she was hurdling the garden fence a few seconds later.

She began knocking at incessant speed on his neighbour's door, trying to peer in through the frosted glass window.

"Who lives here?" she asked, as Matt eased himself carefully over the fence.

"Uh, Mrs. McCulloch. She's been on this road for decades, way before we ever arrived."

"Just her?"

"Yeah, she lost her husband a couple years ago. We kind of took it upon ourselves to keep an eye on her, though."

"Mrs. McCulloch!" the Doctor yelled through the letterbox. "It's the Doctor – can I come in?"

Matt pushed forward and forced the letterbox closed. "What are you doing? You're going to scare her to death."

"I'm slightly concerned that Mrs. McCulloch has significantly more problems than a friendly Time Lord in a stripy top on her doorstep," the Doctor mumbled, looking at her time device that was now bleeping wildly.

"You're a friendly what? Please stop putting 'time' in front of things and acting like it makes sense."

The Doctor tapped her foot impatiently before pulling out her sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the lock. The door swung slightly open in response.

"So you're just breaking and entering now?" Matt asked, as the Doctor cautiously made her way into a darkened hallway.

"I didn't see anything break, did you?"

Matt grumbled and entered his neighbour's house, gently closing the door behind him.

"Mrs. McCulloch?" he called. "It's just Matt from next door. I've come to check on you with…some person. Also, I'm only just now realising that you won't remember me, either, so…"

The Doctor gave Matt a sympathetic smile, before turning to the stairs in the hallway and climbing up them.

Mrs. McCulloch's house was largely traditional, with floral wallpaper lining the walls and numerous photographs of family from across the years.

Matt noticed one of Mr. McCulloch and smiled to himself. "He was a lovely guy. He lost his older brother in the war and always told me to appreciate Sophie and watch out for her. Mrs McCulloch hasn't been the same since he passed."

The Doctor continued her silent ascent and Matt noticed how she had slowed her pace. Strangely, it was when she was quiet and calm that he began to be unnerved by this woman.

"The room furthest on the right should be the one that backs on to yours, yeah?" the Doctor asked once they had reached the upstairs landing.

"I guess so."

The two walked across the landing until they reached the right-hand door.

"Mrs. McCulloch?" the Doctor asked once more, knocking a knuckle gently against the door before pushing slowly on the handle.

It was immediately apparent that the two had entered into Mrs. McCulloch's bedroom. The space was heavily scented with lavender, and the walls were painted a somewhat garish pink. The bed was large but perfectly made, both pillows now piled on top of each other on the left side.

Matt was relieved to find Mrs. McCulloch sat at a dressing table, pushing a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. She was dressed in a nightgown, her long, grey hair falling down her back, which was admittedly a little unusual for this late in the afternoon, but she at least appeared to be safe.

At first.

But several seconds later she was still pushing the same strand of hair back behind her ear. Still looking absently at something in the mirror. Still.


	5. Chapter 5

Matt walked slowly towards Mrs. McCulloch, fascinated and scared, taking in the elderly woman's frozen body. But it wasn't just that she didn't appear to be moving. There was a strange shimmer to her figure, as if some light source was casting rainbows across her.

"What happened?" Matt asked quietly, noticing that the Doctor was still standing in the doorway.

"She's become trapped," the Doctor replied, quickly scanning with her sonic. "A time bubble. Frozen in a single instance of time."

"How do we get her out?" Matt reached a tentative hand towards Mrs. McCulloch's arm, but the Doctor pulled him back instantly.

"We don't. Touch her and your hand will accelerate through time until it becomes nothing but dust. Keep your distance."

"So…she's stuck here?"

"She always has been. And always will be. She's become a permanent mark on time. An immovable constant. One month, five years, three centuries. No matter how far forward you go, she will always be right here. The building could be ripped down around her, the very land beneath her split in two, and she still wouldn't move."

Matt stared at Mrs. McCulloch's lifeless form and couldn't help but feel it was like watching an endless death.

"Why?" he asked simply.

"I don't know. But don't you see – this must be connected to you. You're the two sides of an equation, two parts of a whole. You never have existed and never will. She always has and always will. She fills the hole you left."

Matt remained silent, unsure how to respond. "It looks as if she was frozen this morning, before she got dressed."

"And you were affected this afternoon. Time bubbles take a while to fully form. About as long as timelines take to be erased."

"Won't people ask questions? If she's always here from now."

The Doctor didn't answer, instead pulling out her sonic screwdriver and exhaling heavily. "I can fix that."

She began moving the sonic gently from side to side. Mrs. McCulloch's body seemed to shimmer even more vibrantly, like a reflection in rippling water, before vanishing entirely in a flash of white light.

Matt instinctively took a step forward. "What did you do to her?"

"Technically speaking, I shifted her between dimensions. In practical terms she's still where she was, just shifted out of perceptible space." The Doctor spoke flatly, tucking her sonic away.

"So you hid her." Matt balked, looking at the Doctor out of disbelief.

"No, I made it so that she's not a tragic, _dangerous_ memory. She can live on in a way that she deserves to, not as some hazard that people come to fear."

Matt turned back to the spot where Mrs. McCulloch had been. "You threw a blanket over her. Out of sight, out of mind."

"I did what I thought was best."

"And what have you decided is 'best' about me, huh?" he demanded, genuine fear in his voice. "When do I get zapped to some other dimension so as not to upset people? I'm an ugly anomaly too, why aren't you waving your magic wand over me?"

The Doctor sighed and tried to place a hand on Matt's shoulder. "Because you still have hope."

"It doesn't feel that way right now," Matt said quietly.

"Look, in order to work out what happened to you and Mrs. McCulloch I'm going to need your help. It's not going to be easy, but let's prove you have a place in this universe."

Matt looked away from the Doctor, noticing how cold it was now in this empty room. A few metres away was what had once been his house. The safest place in the world. Now it might as well as drifted into another dimension along with Mrs. McCulloch.

"Ok," he said finally. "What do I need to do?"

The Doctor smiled and bounced on her feet. "Stay there; literally, right there. I'll be back in…eight seconds."

Without another word, she sprinted out of the room, and Matt listened as she hopped down the stairs and out of the front door.

He was just on the verge of consciously ignoring her directions when the wind started making a strange noise. It sounded like some kind of hurricane outside, only it was in this room, surrounding him. And it wasn't just the sound of wind, there was something mechanical to it; a groaning as if some great, metallic beast was breathing into his ear.

Matt looked behind him as the bedsheets began to wave wildly in the unseen breeze, and the world seemed to be becoming first darker then lighter in a pulsating pattern. He immediately feared that whatever had happened to him in the coffee shop was happening again, and he found his body giving way under him.

He fell, and when he opened his eyes a few moments later, found himself sat on some kind of black, metal floor.

"Welcome aboard!" the Doctor said, appearing from behind a strange orange column that glowed as it rose up and down. "We normally just use the door, but I thought this way would save time. I parked in Falkirk; had to get a train before I could pick you up."

"What is this?" Matt asked, lifting himself up from the floor and looking around at the strange room with its giant crystalline structures and oscillating lights.

"It's the TARDIS – my ship. My home."

"You're an alien, then," Matt affirmed, strangely accepting of the fact before the thought had even fully formed.

"Relatively speaking, yes."

"Time…"

"Time Lord. From Gallifrey originally. A long time ago, though; I've probably spent more time just about anywhere else."

Matt placed a hand on the console in the centre of the room, mostly to stop himself falling over again. "Hang on, how did you take a train to Falkirk? You just left the room."

"It travels in time as well as space. It's a nifty little number."

"So it goes…"

"Everywhere. What was and what will be and where no one goes and where everyone is."

"Huh," Matt managed as way of a reply. "Where are we going now then?"

"That's where I need your help." The Doctor walked around the console towards Matt. "The TARDIS has telepathic circuits that can tap in to people's timelines."

"But I thought you said my timeline was erased?"

"Right, but as of whenever you entered _this_ universe you started a new one."

The Doctor smiled as if what she was saying was both blatantly obvious and made any kind of sense at all.

"Therefore," she continued, "if we travel back to your very start, the very point at which you were erased and effectively 'reborn', we might be able to find the cause of it all."

"I see…" replied Matt, not seeing at all.

"Basically, hold on to this dial right here," the Doctor told Matt, pointing to a large knob hidden amongst the cluster of other buttons and switches on the console.

Matt looked to the Doctor who nodded and hopped back around the other side of the console.

"Ready when you are," she said, seemingly waiting to pull a lever down opposite him.

Matt stared at the dial before sighing, desperately wishing that he'd opted for that day in bed he'd been considering, and grabbing on to the button with his hand.

He had been expecting some kind of light pain, like pins and needles, but instead the TARDIS began making strange whirring noises, its lights flashing more wildly than before.

"Perfect!" the Doctor chuckled, pulling down her lever and jumping back to stare at the controls. "Keep holding on, I'm getting her to lock on to your very first moments."

Matt maintained his hold, but thought it was weird that the TARDIS now seemed to be making screeching sounds, like thousands of bats flying from their roost.

"Oh no," the Doctor muttered, freezing in place.

"What? What's wrong?" Matt asked, scared to move himself.

"No, no, no, no, no. Please not now," she begged, banging on even more buttons across the top of the whole console.

The shrieking became louder and the whole room shook, sending the two flying as if they were bugs in a jar.

Matt pulled himself up and ran back to the console. "I let go. Is that bad? I let go," he cried, looking frantically around for the Doctor.

She popped up on his right side, blowing a strand of hair from her face. "I think we have bigger problems. I recommend a brace position."

"How? You don't even have chairs!"

"I know; how did I forget the chairs?" the Doctor sighed, as the TARDIS shook wildly once again.

Matt lay awkwardly on the floor, one hand over his head as if the room might begin collapsing on top of him. The TARDIS was careering from side to side, and Matt found that every time he stopped his body falling one way, it was dragged the other.

"Doctor!" he yelled, above the sounds of exploding cables and the incessant squealing. "What's going on?"

"It's the Reapers. They've found us."


	6. Chapter 6

Everything was silent. The Doctor propped herself up on the console and assessed the damage. A few loose cables, a couple of shot lights, but they seemed to have made it through the attack in one piece. But something felt off. The Doctor looked around the console room and immediately saw the problem; the TARDIS was looping. The time rotor flicked up and down, the lights rapidly dimmed and relit. Everything seemed to be stuck in the space of a few seconds, like a record skipping, endlessly repeating.

"Have they gone?" Matt asked as he wearily looked up over the other side of the console.

"I have my doubts."

"You called them Reapers?"

"They're hunters born of time itself. In a way they have a purpose; they fix temporal mistakes, patch up wounds. They just tend to be a bit…enthusiastic about it."

"Am I one of those wounds? Is that why they attacked us?"

The Doctor brushed some buttons, but they gave no response. "Technically, no. But we were travelling back to the point you entered this universe, reopening a tear they were probably trying to patch up. And so they shoved us out of the way."

"How far out of the way? Where are we exactly?"

"That I'm not sure about." The Doctor tried pulling a few levers. "The TARDIS seems like she's stuck. Wherever we've ended up, time isn't functioning in a way she's used to; she can't quite get her gears going again."

"So what happens next?"

"You really are new, aren't you?" The Doctor smiled and ran down to the doors. "We explore. This door isn't just an exit – it's an entrance to a whole other world."

She pulled open the door, allowing bright white light to flood in. The Doctor shielded her eyes and walked outside.

"What's out there?" Matt asked, unable to contain his intrigue despite his underlying fear.

Matt walked out of the TARDIS and looked back. "Woah. It's smaller on the outside – is that normal?"

"Feature not a bug."

The Doctor was stood a few feet from the TARDIS, staring into the distance. Matt approached her and was unsure what, exactly, she was staring at.

There was nothingness in front of them. A plain white field that stretched endlessly in all directions. The sky, if it could be considered that, was a slightly darker grey, but Matt had to squint to differentiate the two. Matt turned around, confirming what he suspected; the void stretched out in every direction without any differentiator.

"Are we…dead?" Matt pondered, as if that would somehow make anything more logical.

"Death isn't this boring, believe me." The Doctor looked up to the grey sky, noticing how it darkened to a pitch black far above them. "No, this is something else. A pocket universe, at a guess. The Reapers pushed us through here to get us out the way."

"Sounds familiar," Matt mumbled. "Why do I feel…weird. Like…I dunno…"

"Like you shouldn't be here?" the Doctor offered, to which Matt nodded. "It's like the feeling you get when you know someone might catch you in a place you aren't meant to be. Something wants us out of here."

"Hello."

Matt and the Doctor turned slowly to the small voice that had appeared behind them. Initially they saw nothing but more of the endless white. Then they looked down.

"Are you lost too?" a small girl asked them.


	7. Chapter 7

Everyone stood for a while, staring blankly at each other.

Considering the circumstances, the girl seemed relatively calm. She had long, dark hair plaited at the back, and was wearing a cardigan on top of a bright red sleeveless dress. She couldn't have been much older than six, but began frowning at the pair as someone much older than herself might.

"Who are you?" she asked suspiciously.

"Good question! I'm the Doctor, this is Matt," the Doctor replied, crouching down to the girl's level. "And you are?"

"Beth. Father always told me not to talk to strangers, but I need to find my way home," the girl replied, looking around the blank empty space.

"Is that how you ended up here?" Matt asked. "On your way home?"

"I was playing with my friend, but then got distracted when I saw that blue box appear. My teacher, Mrs. Brady, always says I should try and concentrate more," Beth sighed, sticking out her bottom lip.

"And you're not the least bit concerned about…this," Matt said, gesturing to the surrounding void.

"Of course not. I just need to focus," Beth replied, closing her eyes and breathing slowly. "I live on St. Mary's Way. Opposite the park."

Suddenly a street sign seemed to pop into existence to their left, and a large, green field materialised to their right, grass blades appearing to shoot up out of the white.

"The Peterson family live on one side of us, and Mr. Hart and his dog Pepper live on the other."

Two small but fully formed houses materialised a little distance from them, leaving a gap in between.

"We live at number thirty-two, with the bright blue door."

Another house appeared between the two previous ones, a black door changing itself to blue, and the numbers 3 and 2 landing on hooks just above the letterbox.

"Perfect," Beth smiled, opening her eyes.

"Uh huh," Matt managed, mouth agape.

"Would you like to come in? Mother was making tea when I left, but I'm sure we can spare some. It is awfully cold out here," Beth said, as a chill breeze picked up around them.

"We would love to," the Doctor affirmed, nudging a still stunned Matt.

"Fantastic! I bet she'll even let you have the special biscuits." With that, Beth began skipping down a pavement that appeared underneath her feet, leading all the way up to her front door.

"How…how did she do that?" burbled Matt.

"Brilliantly!" the Doctor smiled, and immediately started after Beth, marvelling at the newly appeared surroundings as she went.


	8. Chapter 8

Matt gazed in amazement as he walked down the recently formed path. He could feel the rocky, uneven tarmac under his feet, could even smell the dusty dried-mud between the cracks. But take a few steps across in either direction and it was back to the featureless, flat white of the rest of the space.

As he reached the three houses, they too appeared perfectly realistic, chipped paintwork and uneven bricks intact. The only thing that stood out, which Matt wasn't entirely surprised by, was the lack of any other people in or out of the houses. They were totally deserted, but at least appeared to be recently so; there was a stray football in the Petersons' front garden, and Mr. Hart's lawn was exquisitely well kept, blooming with flora.

Matt pushed open the creaky metal gate at the front of Beth's house and walked through the front door, closing it behind him. The hall seemed cluttered but lived in. Letters and papers were splayed across tables, a range of shoes piled randomly on the wooden floor by the foot of the stairs. Clearly a large family lived here, and Matt followed the sound of Beth's voice into the living room.

"I'll go let my mother know you're here. We never get visitors," Beth said, excitedly moving past Matt as he entered the room. "Please do make yourselves at home."

Matt couldn't help but think of Sophie as he watched the little girl race down the corridor, his heart straining in response.

The living room was somewhat tiny, with garish brown chairs taking up the majority of the space, one of which the Doctor was bouncing up and down on.

"Certainly feels real," she said, nearly slipping off the faux leather. "Though I'm not really used to sitting down all that much; maybe you should try."

Matt sat opposite her on a significantly more weathered chair and shrugged. "It's an uncomfortable chair. Not much I can really take from that."

The Doctor jumped to her feet and raised her arms. "It's amazing though! Somehow, all of this came from that little girl's mind. It was as if she imagined it into existence."

"But where did she come from? We travelled here in an alien spaceship-"

"TARDIS," the Doctor corrected.

"Point being, little girls can't just jump into pocket universes." Matt suddenly felt the need to double-check, given today's events. "Can they?"

"Here they are," Beth interrupted, walking back in to the sitting room.

A young woman followed behind her, arms folded, looking at the two sceptically.

"Hello there," she said, a little coolly.

"Hi, sorry, I'm Matt and this is the Doctor," Matt said, quickly standing up and offering the woman a hand.

She initially looked it as if she were being offered a dead fish before taking it in hers. Matt immediately recoiled, pulling his hand back and shaking it in pain.

"Ouch! That was like some killer electric shock," he said, looking at the Doctor.

"They helped me get home, Mother, and I promised you'd let them stay for tea. Please can they?" Beth begged, opening her eyes wide.

"I'm sure we have enough to go around," the woman replied, still on guard. "Beth, dear, go and wash your hands and get the table laid, will you?"

Beth beamed and bounced out of the room, leaving the woman alone with Matt and the Doctor.

"Did Beth create you?" the woman asked abruptly. "We've admittedly tried before, but we simply assumed people were beyond even her creative abilities."

"No, no, we're real," the Doctor assured, beginning to poke the woman in the shoulder. "See? I'm not sure what this proves, it's just fun to poke people."

"But…how is that possible?" the woman asked, her stance relaxing somewhat. "It's only ever been us."

A familiar screeching rang out, causing the Doctor and Matt to tense up.

"And that thing, of course. It can't be night-time already, surely," sighed the woman, looking at her watch.

"Doctor. That sounded like one of those Reaper things," Matt whispered.

The Doctor nodded. "It shouldn't be here, though. It doesn't belong to this universe."

"Didn't stop us."

"No need to worry," the woman said, looking out of the window. "It hasn't come near here in a while; I saw it flying in the other direction.

"Anyway," she continued, brushing down her dress. "If you truly are real than I suppose I must treat you as one would any other guest. I'm Liz, by the way. Come; eat with us. My friend should be here soon, too."

Liz beckoned the two out of the room and through to the dining area.

Beth was just finishing laying the last of four places, and hurriedly pulled out a chair for the Doctor.

"I'm so glad that you get to meet Grandma as well. You must get her to tell you one of her stories; she's so clever."

Matt sat at the table next to the Doctor and the two remained in a somewhat awkward silence as Beth and Liz left the room to dish up the food.

There was a knock on the front door followed by a mix of voices from the hallway.

"Guess that's Grandma," Matt said, trying to peer out of the room.

After a short while there was a shuffle of footsteps, and the door from the kitchen pushed slowly open, an elderly woman appearing from behind it.

"Matthew?"

Matt let out an audible gasp. "Mrs. McCulloch?"


	9. Chapter 9

Mrs. McCulloch eased herself in a chair opposite Matt and the Doctor, cautiously smiling as if, like Liz, she held an air of suspicion.

"But…how can you be here?" Matt asked, looking between the Doctor and Mrs. McCulloch.

"I could ask you same thing," she replied with a warm smile, brushing down her skirt as she tucked herself under the table.

"We travelled here accidentally. But you…" Matt stopped himself. "Wait, you shouldn't know who I am. No one remembers me."

"Well if you think about it, Mrs. McCulloch never existed in a universe that you didn't – her memories of you shouldn't have been altered," the Doctor clarified.

"What do you mean?" Mrs. McCulloch asked, a look of concern on her face. "Did something happen to you Matthew?"

Matt was silent and avoided meeting her eyes. "How long have you been here?"

Mrs. McCulloch sighed and shook her head. "Sometimes it feels like days, other times like years. I can't complain though; I quite enjoy my own company."

"You're not alone though. Beth said you're her grandmother – I never knew you had any grandchildren."

Mrs. McCulloch let out a laugh and the Doctor sniggered quietly too, causing Matt to slightly feel like he was being mocked.

"What?" he asked.

"Do you want to tell him or shall I, Elizabeth?" the Doctor asked.

Matt furrowed his eyebrows. "How do you know her first name? I never mentioned that. Everyone calls her Mrs. McCulloch. I've only ever heard her sister call her Elizabeth or…"

Matt looked back towards the kitchen, realisation forming in his head. "Or Liz. She's you?"

"Me aged 28, yes," Mrs. McCulloch chuckled. "I couldn't believe it myself the first time either. It was like looking in a mirror across 40 odd years. Of course, initially she thought I was just some doddering old woman, but I thought she deserved to know the truth of it."

"And Beth?" the Doctor prompted. "She's your younger self too?"

"As a little girl. We decided it would be far too confusing to explain to her who we really were. Perhaps she knows on some level, but we're happy enough to let her refer to us as her mother and grandmother."

"That's incredible," Matt murmured.

"There are others, too, that I've met. Most are younger, but some slightly older as well, somehow. I mostly stay with Beth and Liz though. Meeting too many versions of one's self can be quite overwhelming."

"I can empathise," the Doctor nodded solemnly.

"Does this have something to do with the time bubble?" Matt asked the Doctor.

"If I had to guess, I'd say we're _inside_ the time bubble, in a way. When I shifted it across to another dimension it must have expanded to create its own universe. A world entirely inhabited by one person, split infinitely across their own timeline. There is an endless supply of Mrs. Elizabeth McCullochs out there, each as glorious as the last."

"Is that why Beth could create this house out of nowhere?"

"I lived in this house for 16 years, from the day I was born," Mrs. McCulloch replied, looking around the room. "Just as it is now. We've each found that we're able to recreate aspects of our memory in this world. Houses we lived in, places we visited, buildings we worked in. My memory's a little fuzzy, so I'm not as good at creating these things as dear Beth. Quite literally stepping in to my past has been like nothing else I've ever experienced."

The door opened, and Beth and Liz walked in, Beth carrying a large casserole dish in her oven-gloved hands, and Liz a tray holding several different bowls of vegetables.

"Grandma look what Mother made!" Beth said excitedly, placing the dish in the middle of the table.

Mrs. McCulloch leaned over and smelled the aromatic concoction. "Lamb casserole, my favourite."

"It's mine too!" Beth enthused. "Mother made it specially."

The piercing cry of the Reaper interrupted their reverie.

"That darn thing," Mrs. McCulloch grumbled. "Always picks the worst time."

"Sounds like its close," the Doctor said, looking out of the back window to a garden that faded back into the white void.

"Needn't worry; it's never bothered us before. Just swooped around aimlessly," Mrs. McCulloch commented.

"Do you think its after me?" asked Matt cautiously.

"Trust me, if it was after you, you'd know it by now."

Even so, the Doctor didn't take her eyes off the window as Liz began dishing out the meal.

The Reaper cried again, and everybody looked up, the sound emanating from above them.

"That's unusual for it to come this close," Mrs. McCulloch muttered. "Beth, dear, would you mind?"

Beth nodded and closed her eyes. Several large, wooden planks sprung up in front of the windows.

"One positive of being able to remember things from the war," Mrs. McCulloch said quietly.

There was more wailing and screeching from above, and it sounded like something was hitting against the roof itself.

"That may not be enough to stop it," the Doctor said, standing up and pushing everyone behind her.

"Is there somewhere else we can go?" Matt asked, as something thudded against the outside wall.

"Of course," Mrs. McCulloch replied. "We'll just have to remember it first."


	10. Chapter 10

The Reaper continued thumping and squealing against the side of the house as Matt, the Doctor, and the three versions of Mrs. McCulloch rushed towards the front door.

"Losing it won't be easy, but I'm fairly sure it's not specifically targeting us. We're just something new in a universe that it isn't quite used to yet," the Doctor explained, peaking out of the front door. "It's a bee buzzing in a glass jar, desperate to get back to a universe its familiar with. If we can just figure out _how _to do that we might be alright."

The Doctor placed one arm around Liz's shoulder and took Beth's hand with her other. "Beth, Liz, Mrs. McCulloch; I need you to think of somewhere big that you're familiar with. It'll give me time to come up with a plan. Or at least the time to fumble in to one."

The three women nodded and looked to the white space outside, deep in thought.

"I wish that infernal thing would stop its noise," Mrs. McCulloch tutted. "I can't think."

"I've got one!" Liz shouted, looking to her older self. "When we briefly moved to London; our first job."

Mrs. McCulloch smiled. "Wonderful idea! You try and create it, you probably have a more vivid memory than me."

"This is exciting! You never create things for me to see," Beth enthused, jumping out the front door.

Liz followed after her and stood at the end of their front garden, closing her eyes in thought.

A few seconds later an enormous building rose from the white space in front of them. Covered in windows, it towered over the McCullochs' small house and looked more akin to a castle than anything else.

Matt emerged from the house and stared at the building in awe, thinking it familiar, and then noticing the large letters on its corner.

Matt turned back to Mrs. McCulloch. "You worked in Harrods?"

"For about a month. I moved down to London, wanting to make a life for myself, and stumbled in to that place. Perfume department, first floor. I still think some of my clothes smell faintly of mouldy potpourri."

"How do you 'stumble in' to Harrods?" Matt asked in disbelief.

"Spend a bit more time around Liz and you'll see just how charming I used to be."

"Let's get in there," the Doctor beckoned, dashing out past the others and through the gate. "It won't take the Reaper long to follow after us, but hopefully we can lose it in there. I once got lost in a shopping centre on Pluto and ended up living there for five months so I can attest."

Everyone sprinted from the safety of their home, across the white space in between, and over to the somewhat intimidating but largely impressive department store.

"Everybody in!" yelled the Doctor, holding open one of the many doors.

Matt noticed that Beth had fallen behind slightly so held out his hand to her. "Come on. I bet you've never been somewhere like this before. Let's find the toy department."

Beth grinned and took Matt's hand, causing him to receive another electric shock, this time with blue sparks between them.

"Ow! Again? Are you OK Beth?"

The girl nodded. "I didn't feel anything."

"Why does that keep happening?" Matt asked the Doctor as they entered the building.

"You shouldn't coexist. You're…two ends of the same magnet, repelling each other. I'd advise against too much physical contact; you're likely to blow something up, given half a chance."

"Useful info," Matt replied, taking in their surroundings. "This place is huge."

"Mostly why I quit," Liz commented.

Matt heard a familiar noise and turned to see the Reaper diving in their direction towards one of the windows.

"Run!" he yelled, and everyone began sprinting through the store, weaving in and out of displays of bags and shoes and necklaces and watches and every other item one could possibly want to buy for exorbitant prices.

"Head to the lifts, it'll be quicker than the stairs," the Doctor shouted, helping Mrs. McCulloch along who, all things considered, was still fairly spritely for a woman of her age.

The Reaper crashed against the window, shattering the glass, and rose up, screeching above them. It was only now that Matt could finally see the Reaper for what it looked like – a strange mass of wiry limbs and thin, membranous wings that arched from its body like a spider's legs. It scanned the area below it with its pointed head, red eyes darting across the area, before fixing on their location and letting out a shriek.

Everyone sprinted that much harder, Liz being the first to reach the lift and jam on the button.

"Damn thing was always so slow," she said, gritting her teeth.

Finally, the lift doors flew open, and the group piled in to the art deco interior.

The Doctor turned and hit the button for the door, the Reaper crashing through display stands, careening towards them. The doors finally met as the Reaper, tail primed, was forced to stop on the other side.

"Too close," the Doctor sighed, falling against the lift's back wall.

"Since when does Harrods only have two floors?" Matt asked, pointing towards the buttons.

The group stared at the severe lack of buttons in front of them.

"I guess we never did venture that far in to the building when we were here," Mrs. McCulloch said quietly to Liz.

"We worked here, but we certainly couldn't afford to buy anything," Liz added, mostly in reply to Matt's judging look.

"Then let's go somewhere else," Beth said simply, pressing the button for the second floor since none of the adults seemed to want to. "I know just the place."

The lift grinded into life, carrying them upwards, until it quickly came to a rest with a ring of the bell.

The doors opened, and everyone cautiously peered outside, Beth immediately skipping gleefully out.

"A…beach," Matt said in amazement, walking out on to the soft sand that was now outside the lift doors.

"Porthcurno Beach. Near where we grew up," Mrs. McCulloch explained with a smile, looking out to the gently lapping waves.

"It's just how I remember it," Liz said, following behind. "I haven't been in years."

Something about that made Mrs. McCulloch look away sadly, Matt noticing tears in her eyes.

"I think Beth's managed to move us some distance," the Doctor said, taking in her surroundings. "Which should give us a little time before our dear bat-buddy catches back up."

"How's that plan of yours looking?" Matt asked, as the group walked across the silent beach.

"You don't rush these things, Matt," the Doctor said. "It's like a good lamb casserole; you let it stew and develop like a-"

"Nothing yet, then."

"Yeah, not really," she sighed. "We just need to let it out of this world, somehow. But punching through universes isn't all that easy. We need to find a weak point, a join that it could potentially break through."

"Are we in danger if we don't?" asked Liz, watching Beth run along slightly ahead of them, unable to keep herself from wading in and out of the shifting shore.

"Probably," the Doctor admitted quietly. "It'll only become more agitated the more confused it is. It's like a wild animal that's been trapped, lashing out because that's all it knows."

Everyone continued walking in silence. Matt was taken by how strangely peaceful it all was given the circumstances. Glancing further up the coast he noticed a strange, blurry figure sat on a rocky outcrop. He tried blinking, assuming the blurriness was due to fatigue, but the figure remained undefined and hazy around the edges. He was just about to point it out to the Doctor when the figure vanished altogether.

"Something up?" the Doctor asked, noticing Matt's confused expression.

Matt was just about to say he was sure he'd just seen a ghost, when a shining light appeared in the sky ahead of them, eventually coalescing into the shape of the Reaper.

"It's found us already," gasped Mrs. McCulloch, backing away.

"This isn't good," muttered the Doctor. "We're out in the open, sitting ducks."

Liz looked towards the shore, struggling to see her younger self. "Beth? Beth?" she called.

She eventually spotted Beth further down the beach, seemingly unaware of the Reaper's appearance.

"Beth, run!" Liz screamed, as the Reaper dived towards her.


	11. Chapter 11

Matt ran full pelt down the beach, shouting for Beth. The girl turned just in time as the giant winged beast swooped down, and she was nimble enough to dive under its claws and collapse onto the sand.

"Get away from her!" Matt yelled, picking up a large pebble from the shore and throwing it at the Reaper, hitting it in the head.

He wasn't sure whether he had actually hurt the thing or simply shocked it and thrown it off balance, but either way it seemed momentarily dazed, allowing him time to grab Beth's hand and pull her up.

Matt immediately felt the electric sparks jump across his palm, but he was determined not to pull his hand away from hers, every neuron in his brain demanding he do otherwise.

The two sprinted towards Liz who was heading towards them, the Doctor ushering Mrs. McCulloch on in the near distance.

"Thank you," Liz said breathlessly, taking Beth's hand so that Matt could free his own, allowing him to try and shake the pain away.

Matt turned back to see the Reaper flying upwards, clearly readying itself for another quick divebomb.

"Into the cave!" the Doctor yelled just ahead of them, pointing towards a large cove etched into the cliff face at the edge of the beach.

The group dashed in to the darkness and continued to run, the screeching sound coming ever closer.

"I'll get us out of here," Mrs. McCulloch said, clearly out of breath.

They continued to run, the darkness seeming to stretch endlessly in front of them, until there appeared to be a thin sliver of light in the near distance.

The Doctor was at the front of the group and pushed open what was apparently a door, as everyone tumbled out of a cupboard under the stairs.

Mrs. McCulloch was the last out and quickly slammed the door shut behind them, leaning against it in exhaustion.

"Where did you take us, Grandma?" Beth asked, immediately exploring the quiet hallway.

"This is my house, dear," Mrs. McCulloch replied in between breaths.

"No wonder I didn't recognise it," Liz commented. "I do quite like it, though."

Mrs. McCulloch looked up the stairs. "There's a good reason I haven't had you round yet."

It was a very weird sensation for Matt, who for once recognised where they had ended up. Everything suddenly felt normal again, as if the previous however many hours had not happened, and he had instead simply walked next door for a cup of tea with his neighbour.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was literally pacing up and down the hallway, hands on her hips. Matt walked over to her and noticed the odd expression of frustration on her face.

"Everything OK?"

"This is getting silly," she grumbled. "Why is my brain so useless today? We can't just keep running from the stupid thing. We've literally ended up where we started."

"Where we…started…" Matt muttered to himself, the words sparking something in his head.

Other things the Doctor had said came back to him: "A weak point. A join. Blow something up."

"Doctor, I…I think I have an idea."

The Doctor stopped her pacing and looked at him, somewhat confused. "You do?"

"Yeah, but, I need you to keep everyone down here. Yourself included. This…might not work. But I'd appreciate you trusting me."

The Doctor was silent, reading the sincerity in Matt's expression.

"Of course," she said. "But you should know my number one rule: don't take needless risks."

Matt snorted. "Yeah, right. You're nothing but needless risks."

The Doctor smiled, assuming that to be a compliment, and walked over to the women. "Right, then, we need to bunker down in the sitting room. If anyone can remember me a cup of tea and a custard cream that'd be great too."

Everyone went into the living room, Mrs. McCulloch giving Matt a suspicious look as she walked past, ultimately leaving him alone in the hallway.

Matt stood quietly for a while, simply trying to calm his breathing. He caught his reflection in a mirror on the wall and could see the exhaustion in his own face. That and his hair was back to being a mess.

Slowly, he eased himself up the familiar stairs, and across the landing. It felt like he was now reliving his own memories as he pushed the handle on the door furthest to the right.

He carefully entered Mrs. McCulloch's bedroom, feeling oddly relieved that things were as he had predicted they might be. He closed the door behind him and sat on the edge of the bed, looking across to Mrs. McCulloch as she had appeared before him earlier that day; stuck in an instance, her hand pushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I'm glad you're still here. I would've felt a bit stupid if my idea was a complete bust."

Matt gently traced the creases in his hands. "I don't even know if you can hear me. I guess it doesn't really matter either way.

"The Doctor said we were back where we started. And I suddenly thought that was ironic because it's also where you ended. Where we both did, I guess."

Matt turned to a sound of banging and squealing outside the window. "It's here then. Good.

"I think you might be the weak point; the join the Doctor was looking for. The point where you left one world and entered another. An end and a start. And maybe together, we can bust this thing out of here and back to where it belongs."

Matt stood up and approached the frozen Mrs. McCulloch. "Here's hoping your time bubble doesn't also kill me. That wouldn't be great."

The Reaper was crying wildly now, crashing against the window. "I guess it thinks I'm on to something too. No backing out now then."

Matt exhaled, cracking his knuckles and unsuccessfully trying to relax his shoulders. "Here goes."

Slowly, Matt reached his hand forward, through the bubble that fortunately didn't seem to have any negative effects in this universe, until he was able to place it gently against Mrs. McCulloch's shoulder.

The pain was immediate. Like grabbing on to a boiling hot pan, Matt wanted nothing more than to yank his hand back.

Instead he concentrated on the blue sparks that began dancing outwards from underneath his palm. Initially they quickly dissipated, but as Matt held his hand down longer, the pain becoming increasingly unbearable, the sparks began shooting outwards more violently.

As if in response, the Reaper let out a feverish squeal that almost sounded like it was excited.

Matt gritted his teeth, his whole arm trembling, beads of sweat clinging to his head.

You could actually hear the sparks now as they jumped about, shooting out around the room. One flew directly in to the mirror of the dressing table in front of Mrs. McCulloch, causing a huge crack to emerge vertically across its surface.

Not long after, the crack began to glow, and the mirror itself seemed to bend and undulate like water, the sparks now not hitting its face but seeming to dissolve directly in to it.

There was a crash to Matt's left and he looked to see the Reaper break its way into the bedroom. He had a moment of fear, sure that it was looking squarely in his direction. Instead, it silently glided towards the mirror, its huge form melting in to the rippled surface.

Matt waited no longer than he needed, pulling his hand back and collapsing to the floor, causing the mirror to explode into tiny fragments of glass.

He looked at his hand which was now red raw and blistered, and was able to stay conscious just long enough to hear an assortment of voices flooding in to the room behind him, before he finally closed his eyes and allowed himself some sleep.


	12. Chapter 12

On Porthcurno Beach, Mrs. McCulloch sat peacefully on a tartan blanket, watching her two younger selves giggle as they played together in the lapping waves.

She turned to the sound of footsteps crunching sand behind her and smiled as Matt eased himself down at her side.

"Seems like that creature's definitely gone," she said, looking out to the horizon.

"Yeah. The Doctor said its probably been 'absorbed back in to the time vortex' whatever that means." Matt looked down at his newly bandaged hand, gently squeezing his fingers as much as the constraints would allow.

"And you and the Doctor? Have you figured out a way back yet?"

"She said she has an idea, so…" Matt trailed off. For whatever reason, now that all of today's dramas had been put to bed, he couldn't shake an overbearing feeling of sadness. "What about you? I guess you can't really come with us, but…"

Mrs. McCulloch smiled. "Don't worry about me. I'm perfectly happy here."

"Truly? Because being stuck with nothing but memories must be hard."

"Matthew, let me tell you something; before you arrived I simply assumed this was heaven. That my life had ended, and this was what was left. When I saw that instance of me, frozen, in my bedroom I knew I had seen my last moment.

"But seeing these other versions of me makes me remember just how good I've had it. I didn't just have one life; I had so many. I was so many different people for so many years. When you get old you forget that sometimes. You chose to concentrate on your ailing limbs and fading brain. You don't actually appreciate your life for what it is; a truly marvellous journey."

Mrs. McCulloch let out a small sigh of both exhaustion and satisfaction. She watched Beth rush, barefoot, out of the cold sea water, giggling as Liz tried to catch her. "It's them I'm more sorry for. All the things they'll never experience. There's only so much I can show them, and it's nothing like living it for themselves.

"Did you know this is the beach where I first met Henry? Visiting family back home in Cornwall. He was on holiday here from Scotland, believe it or not. Sat up there on those rocks. Reading some kind of trashy murder mystery as he was want to do. We were married six months later.

"That was going to happen for Liz in a few months' time, relatively speaking. Now she'll never know him."

Matt turned back and looked at the rocks Mrs. McCulloch had pointed out. "I think I may have seen him earlier, up there. Is that possible?"

She turned to Matt, not looking entirely surprised, but tears in her eyes none the less. "Perhaps. We've often discussed the possibility of recalling people rather than places. It seems a great deal harder. I'm happy that he's still watching over us. Maybe one day I'll meet him again."

Matt wanted nothing more than to place an arm around Mrs. McCulloch, but the continued throbbing in his bandaged hand dissuaded him. She seemed to sense this, and gently kissed her hand and placed it as close to his face as she could.

There were soon more footsteps, and the Doctor marched up behind them, carrying an assortment of ice cream.

"Cornish ice cream; nothing better. Technically, it is stolen since there was no one in the shop, but I don't think anyone will mind."

"Let me take those off you, dear," Mrs. McCulloch said, pulling herself slowly to her feet and taking three of the ice creams. "The girls will love these. Quite lucky that I remember all of the flavours they used to sell."

They watched as Mrs. McCulloch began walking down the beach towards her past lives. The Doctor sat herself next to Matt and passed him his ice cream, Matt being careful to take it in his left hand.

"That was some quick thinking back there," the Doctor said between licks.

"You gave me the inspiration," he shrugged. "I didn't do it out of bravery, I did it because it made sense."

"You did it because you care. And that's sometimes the bravest thing you can do."

Matt looked silently out to the three women on the beach. "Can I ask a question?"

"Shoot."

"Does it feel funny, knowing that you were the one to essentially create this whole universe?"

The Doctor stopped her licking and furrowed her brows. "I didn't do it. This is all Mrs. McCulloch. I can't imagine something like this springing up without someone having a fantastic memory and strong sense of self."

"I guess," Matt replied, mostly unsatisfied. "I don't think I can ever be like Mrs. McCulloch, though. She's embraced this whole place, changed her view of everything. But if one day you can just have your life ripped from you, what's the point?"

"Because the next day you just might save a whole universe all by yourself."

A wave crept onto the shore, consuming a recently created sandcastle, sweeping the grains back to the coastline, returning things to what once was.


	13. Chapter 13

"You're sure this will work?"

"Course not," the Doctor replied, as she and Matt walked back to the TARDIS, which was much closer than either was expecting. "But it's worth a shot."

Mrs. McCulloch, Liz and Beth were waiting for them by the ship, each examining the blue box for differing reasons.

"I had one like this near my school; me and Cynthia always used to get told off for playing in it," said Beth.

"Are you sure this is yours? The doors are locked," Liz asked, pushing on the handle.

The Doctor clicked her fingers and the doors swung gently open. "Yep, that's mine."

Matt walked across to Mrs. McCulloch. "Thank you, for everything you've done. Not just today, for all those times you looked out for me and my family. You never turned us away and I think sometimes we never really acknowledged that."

Mrs. McCulloch smiled. "Don't be silly. I loved having you all next door. When Henry passed…well, let's just say you were all incredibly important to me too. Make sure you tell Sophie and your parents that when you get back."

Matt forced a smile and gave a small nod. "Of course."

"Right then, I guess we better get going," the Doctor announced. "Beth, I know for a fact that you're going to grow up to be a fantastic woman. Liz, you already are one, never forget that."

They nodded and smiled, waving as Matt followed the Doctor into the TARDIS, Matt briefly stopping for one last look back at his former neighbour.

He closed the doors and turned around, only now remembering how strange the inside of this box was.

The Doctor was already at the controls, rigging something up. The TARDIS was still stuck in its loop, the lights pulsating steadily.

"So, just to be clear, we're going to use Mrs. McCulloch as a jumper cable?" Matt asked, walking up to the console.

"In a roundabout way," the Doctor replied, dancing around, mashing buttons. "Mrs. McCulloch has literally all the time in the world; an infinite supply. Syphoning off just a bit should kickstart the TARDIS enough to hop us back into our universe. All I need is one tiny millisecond."

"And that will be enough?"

"Not on its own. But here's what Mrs. McCulloch also has; an infinite supply of herself."

Outside the TARDIS, Mrs. McCulloch, Beth and Liz all placed their hands on the blue exterior, gently closing their eyes and feeling the thrum of the TARDIS pulse up their arms.

Gradually, more versions of Mrs. McCulloch appeared. Some middle-aged, some much older, some even younger than Beth. Each took a place around the TARDIS, and each placed their hand on the painted surface as well. Soon, there was a lifetime's worth of one singular person, sharing one singular idea.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor and Matt stood, waiting patiently. Soon, the movement of the time rotor seemed much less truncated, and the lights remained on for much longer.

"It's working," the Doctor said in hushed tones, and began twisting several dials in front of her.

With a heavy wheeze, the TARDIS returned to life, everything restoring to full motion, and the comforting sound of the whirring machinery filling the room.

"Thank you, Elizabeth," Matt said quietly, watching the time rotor rise and fall.

"I suggest holding on to something; we're about to breach a universe," the Doctor shouted, as the TARDIS began becoming increasingly noisy.

Matt grabbed hold of what at least appeared to be an in-built handle on the side of the TARDIS console, but was quickly shaken to the floor as they blasted back in to a familiar universe.

"Phew!" the Doctor exclaimed, readjusting her coat and grinning as she checked the controls. "We made it! Smell that fresh, temporally-normal air."

Matt smiled too, letting out a sigh of relief, before remembering his current situation.

"So what do I do now?" he asked quietly.

The Doctor looked up, slowing her frantic piloting. "Well, I'm more than happy to take you back to Edinburgh, if you'd like. Or if you'd find it easier to start a new life somewhere else, then name the place. I hear Rome is nice this time of year. But maybe I'm thinking of 2102…"

Matt didn't reply, instead awkwardly fiddling with a switch that he desperately hoped wasn't all that important.

"Or," the Doctor continued, "you can travel with me. I'm determined to find out what caused the time anomalies. They weren't natural, and them appearing in the middle of a house in Edinburgh can't be random. But I don't think I could do it all alone."

Matt looked up, only now realising that that was what he had wanted to hear.

"It could be anything, though. Anywhere."

"Exactly," the Doctor said with a wry smile.

"Come on then," Matt said, walking around to the Doctor. "Let's start."

2


End file.
